


these sweet instincts

by spells



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood, Gen, M/M, Neighbors, Phobias, There will be romance, Vampires, await part 2, there's no actual romance but its just the two of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27011242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spells/pseuds/spells
Summary: "How do you feed?""Come again?""You're scared of blood, aren't you? How do you feed?"
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 154





	these sweet instincts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vacant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vacant/gifts).



> to vee. take this as a belated birthday gift (i cannot believe i missed it). you are so impossibly kind and sweet and great, i'm glad to have met you.
> 
> title is from sidney gish's impostor syndrome; _these sweet instincts/ ruin my life_

The man at the bus stop reeks of alcohol so badly it’s sour, like he’s drenched in vinegar, like he’s probiotic. Kiyoomi makes sure to sit at one end of the bench, as far as he can get, his face turned to the side and his face mask perched high up his nose.

That doesn’t stop him.

“God… I just—” He hiccups, and Kiyoomi wonders what his breath must stink of. He’s disheveled, looking like he just stepped right out of the gutter, murky and rumpled. His hair, bleached blonde like streetlights, mats against his skull, and his clothes are flat on his skin, stained, probably covered with unknown drinks’ spills. It’s disgusting. Kiyoomi’s not looking at him, now, but merely an instant of analysis, when he arrived at the bus stop, was sufficient. “I just wanted to kiss someone with fangs, dude! Like, like— God,” he moans, whines, “why doesn’t a vampire want me? Bro, they’re so sexy.”

Kiyoomi’s scowling, underneath the darkness, underneath the mask. He’s not looking; when he feels the man’s grimey, dive-bar hand on his shoulder, he jumps and recoils like he’s dipped into an ice bath.

“Hey, mate.” In reflex, Kiyoomi turns to look at him, and he’s frowning. He reeks of ethyl alcohol, maybe cheap vodka, just bitter and pungent. “Are ya’ listenin’?”

Kiyoomi stands, instead of speaks. He’s just lucky enough; his bus, lucky numbers glowing in neon above the windshield, turns the corner and comes to a halt in front of him. He’s lucky, too, that the man is too wasted for reflexes, too wasted to be quick. Kiyoomi can hear, in the dead quiet of the evening, his groans behind him, fading off into the cold air like condensation.

He’s just lucky enough; he gets in, pays for his ticket, sits down. He’s not so lucky that this isn’t the drunk man’s bus.

Kiyoomi doesn’t like public transport, even when it’s empty. Of course, it’s worse when it’s full, all those warm bodies and exhales and touches, grimey hands on the railings and the artificial feel of the bright white lights. Even in its emptiness, however, he’s stepping through the lingering presence of other people’s air, sitting down and feeling invisible dirt clutch onto him through the fabric of his trousers.

From several feet away, he feels the alcohol-ridden soundwaves of the drunk man’s voice, hears him falling over even when the bus is in standstill, tripping on his own steps. The driver doesn’t seem to like having him on, but there’s not much he can do before the man turns into a bother, so he just tells him to sit down right behind the driver’s seat. Kiyoomi feels sorry for him — the driver, not the man. The man should be mature enough to handle his liquor and his life choices; strangers have no business having to deal with him at his lowest.

_ Why doesn’t a vampire want me  _ seems pretty self-explanatory, now.

Kiyoomi sucks on his fangs and realises he’s hungry. There is not a worst time to feel hungry, to feel thirsty — he can probably sleep away the emptiness in his stomach, he just has to get home.

He just has to get home.

The bus reaches his stop, and he holds onto the bars to absorb the impact of the brakes. The drunk, all those seats ahead, bounces forward and crashes onto the seat ahead of him, yelping loudly, clambering into the hallway. There aren’t many people here to watch him, sufficient to count on Kiyoomi’s fingers, but they all seem to try to ignore him. For once, Kiyoomi appreciates the strangers around him, tasteful enough to pretend the drunk man’s not there.

He stands up, glad that it's over, excited to get this over with, but he's not lucky enough. The man stands up, too, holding himself high with the aid of the railings, and takes a deep breath that leaves Kiyoomi without any air for himself. He takes up all the space in the hallway, selfish and incredibly obnoxious for such a silent action.

"Thank'ya fer the ride," he says, bowing his head towards the driver. Kiyoomi's not sure if his words are drunk-slurred, if it's an accent, or both. He absolutely does not want to find out.

"Just get out of my bus, man."

Kiyoomi's unlucky, cursed, jinxed. He waits for the man to get off the bus, nods ever-so-slightly to the bus driver in both a thank-you and an apology — apologising for the man he's never met, or apologising that either of them had to be stuck in this situation? —, and walks down the steps onto the pavement.

The man is already leaning on a lamppost, heaving. Kiyoomi walks right past him, pretending he doesn't see a thing, grossed out and perturbed, his skin itching with it. He wanted to go to sleep as soon as he got home, but he can feel the sweat in his pores, the dirty things, the unsettling, and he has to take a shower, now. Maybe two. He has to get this out of his system.

"We're goin' the same way!"

He doesn't turn around to look, but he picks up his pace. No, no, no. They are not going the same way; he might not be the luckiest person, he is no collection of rabbit feet and four-leaved clovers, but he has not gotten so low yet.

"Hey, c'mon!" The man yelps as if he stumbled, and even the irritation in his voice seems joyful, tipsy, "I open'd up t'you, wait up!"

In general, Kiyoomi is not glad he is a vampire, is not thankful, is not tuned into his ancestrality, no matter how much the people around him have tried to convince him to get in touch with his true self. He is not a beast, or a creature, or anything but a human who must sustain off blood.

He picks up his pace, and puts a bit of being a vampire into it. It changes everything, like changing gears, like turning on the four-wheel traction. Even though he knows nothing apparent changes, he feels like he's stepping different, like he's standing different. He's not speeding, he's not running, but it feels like he's doing the most with what he's got, walking to his full potential.

"Hey! Wait, you— Vampire!"

Kiyoomi's safe, Kiyoomi's home. He's not glad he is a vampire, but he's thankful he's being left alone, finally. He digs out the keys from his coat pocket, sorts through them calmly, sticks it into the apartment complex gate, and an out-of-breath human turns the corner.

If he weren't wearing his mask, Kiyoomi would bare his fangs on instinct. "Why are you following me." It comes out less like a question, and more like a threat, even if he's not saying anything threatening. He can feel his hands tight by his sides, his strength, vampiric, flooding through his muscles, tighter, bigger, stronger.

"I live here," the drunk man pants, his hands on his knees, out of breath. He looks up, smiling with his eyebrows furrowed, his hair all messy, now. "Didn't mean to follow ya', but ya' came my way."

He walks closer, and Kiyoomi's frozen in place. The man doesn't seem the same kind of drunk, anymore, and more like a stupid, unfiltered, unstoppable person. He’s awfully tall, he’s awfully handsome. If he didn’t stink, if he weren’t invading Kiyoomi’s space, if he didn’t look like rainbows on curb-side oil leaks, maybe Kiyoomi would give any thought to his handsomeness.

“Vampire,” the man says, drops of awe in his eyes, glassy and awful and twisted with some degree of desire — drunken, high, sickly.

Kiyoomi doesn’t respond; he pushes open the door to the apartment complex and uses whatever remains of his energy to climb up the stairs before he can be caught up to. He hates using his aptitudes, hates the way he can change gears into vampire, into beast, hates the way it drains the blood from his veins, making him inhuman, making him incomplete.

He hates the way he gets dizzy with it, bangs the front door of his apartment shut and heaves with his back against the wood. He feels his fangs filling his mouth, feels their pressure against the inside of his bottom lip, cut-throat.

He only goes to sleep when the sun rises; his body doesn’t want to sleep when it’s dark, not when it’s wired to kill, cut, eat. He closes every window’s blinds, running away from the sun and into the comfort of the lightlessness, and waits for his body to wind down, warm up, and fall asleep shielded from the morning.

  
  


Growing up, vampire kids would always be the rascals. They’d always be the troublemakers, human teachers too slow to catch up with them, vampire principals watching over a detention class of twenty fanged teenagers with too much energy and a growing taste for blood. Kiyoomi hung around the wrong crew for the first year of high school, and ended up in those same classes, sitting in the last seat with his arms crossed and his face mask on.

He’d learned to stop abusing his powers —  _ I don’t think they’re powers _ , Motoya had said, but what did his human cousin know?  _ I think you just have an easier time being strong  _ —, learned to fit in and be normal.

It’s not that being a vampire cast him out, made him different. In this society, being a vampire isn’t something that will abnormalise you or set you apart.

That does not mean Kiyoomi doesn’t feel abnormal.

He’s spent the past few years being human. He’s spent the past few years talking very little, eating publicly even less, any opportunity to have his mouth hanging open and his fangs peeking out wildly uninviting. He’s spent the past few years recoiled, in face masks, at home, his skin grey and pale not because he’s a vampire, but because he doesn’t go outside, because he never gets any sun. He’s spent the past few years with no special ability, no remarkable speed, no inhuman strength.

To use so much vampirism in one night is like opening the drain in a brimming bath, the water whirlpooling into nothingness. You can’t support yourself on atrophied muscles, and Kiyoomi knew it, he just didn’t care.

It was the first time anyone came up to him like that, and the first time in a while someone had called him what he was, been blunt and true and hurtful,  _ vampire, vampire.  _ His heart sped up and his blood thickened on instinct, deterministic natural reactions, and he couldn’t not run. He had never fought instead of flown.

He sleeps through the whole day. He wakes up at three in the morning, the next day, his limbs still made of lead and silver, alloys of heavy metals making up his bodily composition. He should have seen it coming, but he didn’t, or he didn’t care.

Kiyoomi wishes he could give up his body, could give up being what he is. He wishes he could cease being wrong, living as a mistake, trauma and scars turning his skin thick like he’s calloused all over. You can’t see the marks if there’s no start and no finish; you can’t see the scars if they’ve become a new layer of skin, a new barrier, thicker, replacing the weakness of being human while not.

His phone screen lights up, and he blinks through unread texts from Motoya. He can’t process them all the way through, doesn’t make sense of his worried tone and double digit notifications, doesn’t quite get it.

It takes him five minutes of rolling around in bed to fall asleep again. When he wakes up, he can feel the thickness of daylight, poured and cracking like hardened caramel, even when his apartment is still in the stale emptiness of dark and quiet.

Quiet; he wonders what time it is. Three knocks on his door, and he realises what woke him up.

It takes him eight minutes to get up and walk to his front door. He breathes by it, waits to see if he can hear steps leaving, if he can hear heavy breathing, if the alarm-clock knock is still there or if they left.

They knock again, and Kiyoomi opens the door.

Blonde, drunk, why-doesn’t-a-vampire-want-me stands in the hallway, looking significantly less drunk and significantly more put-together. Kiyoomi’s senses aren’t working properly, but he’s quite certain he doesn’t stink, either, which is a plus.

“Hey.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t reply, out of habit, out of need, out of exhaustion. He doesn’t reply because he can’t be bothered to open his mouth, and because he doesn’t  _ want  _ to open his mouth; his brain is spinning like a slow motion record player, and he can feel his fangs cutting into his cheeks.

“Can I come in?”

Kiyoomi feels his fangs inside his mouth, feels his body empty like it was carved hollow. A stranger, and his dark home; “What do you want?”

“Just here to apologise,” the man says, raising his hands like he’s been caught — like he’s innocent. “For the other night. I wasn’t exactly… Level-headed.”

“Noted.” Kiyoomi closes the door, but the man’s foot comes in, and Kiyoomi looks back up at him. He’s so tired. “What?”

“Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

From here, Kiyoomi can feel his bed calling to him, the darkness enveloping him, pulling him back like vines wrapped around his feet. The darkness is so compelling; it’s where monsters come from. Where he belongs. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? I could grab something for you at the store.” The man smiles like a test, sweet like a trap, like flowers to cover a sinkhole. He holds himself so high, too, and Kiyoomi doesn’t know to what extent he is trustworthy.

A beat passes, in silence, and Kiyoomi looks down.

He’s taken his foot away.

Kiyoomi closes the door, gently, and there’s a weird feeling in his chest. The quietness, of his empty apartment and of the occupied hallway outside, is making his skin itch, making his stomach turn. 

He doesn’t have the energy to walk back to his room. He falls sitting beside his front door, drowning in the blankets he kept himself wrapped in, and hears the man’s soft steps fading away, down the stairs. He feels pushed away, not as much drowning in his blankets as surrounded by ice cold water, ice cubes sticking to his skin, floating, frigid.

Time works weirdly for vampires, as do most human inventions. Kiyoomi usually has a good grasp on it; maybe it’s his nerves, or his exhaustion, but not even a second passes between the leaving footsteps and the new bout of knocking. It’s like his eyes glossed over, and he froze while time kept ticking by. It’s like he ceased existing, finally, for just some time.

“Hey, neighbour?” The knocks are softer, now. It barely sounds like the same man, at all. Kiyoomi stands and opens the door, still empty, still weird.

He feels—

“I didn’t know what the problem was, so here’s what I got,” the man says. He’s holding a grocery store bag, and Kiyoomi didn’t expect this.  _ I just wanted to kiss someone with fangs, we’re goin’ the same way, vampire _ . He didn’t expect some sort of kind and worrying, even if weirdly so, even if awkwardly so, neighbour. Some kind of six-foot-something, twenty-something boy-next-door. He sets the items in Kiyoomi’s hands, pries them open, as he takes them out and lists them, “Some aspirins, even though I don’t know if you take ‘em, sports drinks, and blood.”

The freezing comes back the moment the man sets the warm styrofoam cup in Kiyoomi’s hands. He goes weak and drops it, but that’s even worse; the lid pops off, and blood spills into his apartment and into the hallway, warm and viscous and red, red, red, like cursed fate. The longer he looks at it, frozen, standing still because the vines on his feet turned into tree roots with the strength of the earth, the sicker he feels, the darker it turns, like it’s clotting on the flooring despite all of the anti-coagulation agents added to store-bought blood. The longer he looks at it, the louder gets the ringing on his ears, the stronger becomes the shaking of his core, his arms, his legs, and the fainter becomes the man’s voice,  _ hey, hey, are you okay? _

He gets back to himself still looking at his hands, empty and pale, no traces of blood, no traces of life. He gets back to himself sitting on his couch, wrapped in his blanket, with his front door wide open and his neighbour, nameless, sober and blonde, mopping away the blood. He hears music, he feels empty.

He feels like he could be sick.

Coming back from a phobic reaction is slow, a countless-step process. Coming back from a phobic reaction is his vision unblurring, his eyes focusing, but the world around him nothing more than a silent film. Then comes his hearing, buzzing, that high-toned pitch muffling, coming down, lowering into soothing voices or city sounds, voices far away but coming closer. Finally, he stops shaking, he starts feeling again; the warmth of his comforter, the plush of his couch cushions, the soft light in his apartment, the blinds half-open, light seeping on the floor like mist.

“Sakusa-san,” his neighbour says, after a while. Kiyoomi isn’t quite yet comfortable with this stranger in his home, even if it’s to take care of him. The frantic, flushed look on his face both helps and doesn’t. “Are ya’ feelin’ better?”

Kiyoomi opens his mouth to speak, and feels his fangs popping out and poking into his bottom lips. His stomach lurches; he closes his mouth, and takes a deep breath. “Mhm.”

“Okay, so, um. I’m gonna go. I’m sorry.”

There’s a lot to be sorry for — the blood, the other night’s drunkenness, the low-degree home invasion —, but Kiyoomi is tired. If he was feeling normal, if he hadn’t just come back from a day and a half of sleeping through vampirism and a God-knows-how-long phobic reaction, he wouldn’t be kind to his neighbour. Maybe he’d stare him down, maybe he’d shoo him away.

He just nods.

The man walks to the door and pulls it closed, slowly, but stops when there’s just a smidge left. Kiyoomi turns to look, and the man looks more hesitant, shyer, than he’s been at any point. He’s looking down at the ground, uncertain, and he doesn’t hold himself high, anymore. Kiyoomi can’t know, but he feels like this is uncharacteristic — it looks strange, in his face, in his body, to be slumped and shy and ponderate. It doesn’t fit in with the rest of the clues.

He raises his head, then. “I’m Miya Atsumu. If you… wanted to know.”

  
  


Two weeks go by, and Kiyoomi doesn’t think about Miya Atsumu at all.

Kiyoomi is a methodical person; he lives his life on a routine, tightly following his schedule, keeping himself on track. He wakes up, he showers, he eats, he goes to work. He doesn’t have the time or the strength of will to mull over getting a panic attack in front of a stranger, being out of it in front of someone he didn’t even know the name of. He doesn’t have the time or the strength to analyse slurred words that smell of old booze, or to analyse coy looks and dim-lit hesitance.

Why should he worry about someone who doesn’t matter?

Miya Atsumu flees entirely from his thoughts. Instead, he worries about deadlines, worries about the softly worded lecture that Motoya gives him in regards to the abuse of his hyper abilities and how he should keep them warmed up. Motoya doesn’t get it, as much as he’s nice about it. Ever since they were kids, he’s always thought it was cool that Kiyoomi was like this, and not that it was a burden, a weight—

Kiyoomi doesn’t have the time to think about Miya Atsumu. All of his overthinking is taken up with trauma, and vampirism, and guilt.

So when he runs into him at the store, by the check-out aisles, it’s a bit shocking. Not surprising, not overwhelming; more like a spray of cold water, an awakening. It’s more like remembering  _ oh, right, this happened. _

Kiyoomi hates the way he can feel his fangs in his mouth as soon as he sees Miya. He hates the way seeing him makes him remember,  _ vampire _ , and all the weight comes right back.

“Oh, Sakusa,” Miya smiles, waving with his free hand, and he’s not the same man he was when he said his name. There’s nothing coy or shy about him; his hair glows almost neon, fluorescent, radioactive, under the store’s tube lights. It’s not run-down and washed grey like it had been in the evening, or almost white like it was in the afternoon.

Miya holds himself high, and his smile is like a trap. Kiyoomi just nods from behind his mask.

“Haven’t run into ya’ since that day — I think our schedules don’t match at all, huh?” Kiyoomi doesn’t mention the fact that they had never run into each other before, doesn’t mention the fact that he wouldn’t want to run into him, anyway. “I’ve been brimmin’ with questions to ask ya’, I’m glad we’re getting the chance to talk! You were goin’ home, right? We can walk together.”

Kiyoomi wonders if there’s any escaping this. He pays for his groceries, and Miya Atsumu follows suit, with that smile of his. It doesn’t really seem like Kiyoomi’s the vampire between them; with the way Miya grins, he deserves fangs. He doesn’t act like he’s shorter, doesn’t act like he’s weaker. Maybe self-confidence has given him everything in his life, maybe he believes it can give him more.

“So, what’s yer deal?” Kiyoomi turns to look at him and scowls, but Miya just laughs. “I had never met a vampire who reacted like that to blood. Are ya’ like, anemic? Or hypersensitive, or something?”

“Haemophobia.”

Miya hums. For a second, Kiyoomi thinks he’s got peace. For more than a second, in fact: they go down blocks, Kiyoomi with his fast-paced steps and Miya long and leisurely, as if he’s got nowhere to be, and he appreciates the fact that Miya isn’t trying to keep up a conversation. It would just be better if he weren’t here at all. “How do you feed?”

Kiyoomi rolls his eyes. He’s lucky enough to not have dealt with this too much in his life, but he knows there’s a first time to all things; the downside to living methodically is the fact that the world is random, unlucky, and coincidental. There is always someone, something, there to mess up your routine. “Come again?”

“You’re scared of blood, aren’t you? How do you feed?”

“I don’t see how that concerns you.”

“I’m askin’ because I’m concerned,” Miya laughs. “Not concerned, I guess. Curious.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t think Miya deserves a reply, really. He doesn’t like strangers, he doesn’t like straying away from habit, doing something besides what he knows, what he’s used to. He thinks about his front door open, music he doesn’t know playing from inside his apartment, light coming from beneath the blinds, and Miya Atsumu mopping up blood. He doesn’t feel very good, and his scowl deepens.

“Hey, come on, Sakusa. Indulge me.”

“No.” Kiyoomi opens the door to their apartment complex, and Miya is still right behind him.

“No way I can get ya’ to talk? No? No chance you’ll come over?”

Miya stops on the third floor, and picks out keys from his front pocket. Kiyoomi goes a few steps up the next flight of stairs but, for reasons that are beyond him, he stops, and turns around.

He can see into Miya’s apartment, even if just a bit; it doesn’t look too dirty, nor too bright. There are boxes, still in the entryway, and it makes him think that the reason why they hadn’t met up, before, at all, might be because Miya’s a new tenant.

“Wanna come in? I make wicked coffee.”

Kiyoomi looks at him, the way of a vampire in the shape of a man, and he feels—

“Thanks,” Kiyoomi says, but he turns and walks away.

  
  


Don’t hold him responsible; he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

There’s no getting used to not drinking blood. Kiyoomi has never heard, or met, a vampire that did that, too. He knows humans have their vegans, knows there’s always an odd one out, but he feels like he’s the exception to the rule. He’s the abnormal, the impostor.

He lives; he’s alive. There’s only so much life, though, when you don’t have the one thing you need to live. Maybe he’s less living than he is postponing death.

Whichever it is, he has rough patches.

He will never stop thinking vampires are beasts, far more animalistic than humans, because he has moments when his bloodthirst drives him mad. It’s like his vision’s tainted in red, like his body can’t stand its own blood. He’s a lost soul, misguided, traipsing endlessly in search of something, anything, to make the pain stop. Refusing to stop it with what he knows is the answer.

He knows he brings this upon himself; he knows it’s the life he’s chosen.

He stumbles down the stairs, hoping some fresh air will help him. Miya Atsumu’s door is half-open.

Kiyoomi thinks about him, blunt smile, blonde hair and all. Thinks about the muscles hidden beneath the fabric of his shirt and his good posture, his neck, the way he was red like desire asking for a kiss, asking for fangs, asking for carnage—

When he knocks, he feels like their roles have been reversed. He thinks back to Miya knocking on his door, thinks back to him raising his hands and apologising.

“Come in!”

There’s a feeling of loss as Kiyoomi walks inside, impossibly different from the emptiness of being a vampire when he wasn’t ready to. Now, his body yearns for it, asks for it, wants him to be strong and fast and clever. He feels lost in it, navigating through waters he does not know, following an upside-down map.

There’s also the rancid smell of smoke.

“Is something burning?” He says, and he’s scowling again.

Miya sticks his head out the kitchen door, and Kiyoomi isn’t at all fond of the grin that takes over his face, his eyes, cheeks and mouth, when he sees him. “Sakusa.”

He can hear Miya’s heartbeat; he has to control himself. He doesn’t enter the kitchen to keep a safe distance, but from the doorway he can see the smoke wafting out the window.

“Uh, yeah, I sorta’ burned somethin’ I was cookin’? But it’s fine, there was a lot more smoke before.” Miya rests his hip on his counter, grinning. “Didn’t expect that to be you.”

Kiyoomi bites the inside of his cheek, trying to feel anything but his fangs, anything but his blood, roaring, asking to be renewed, asking to be refilled. He’s trying to think of a reason why he’s here; he’s trying to think of a way to respond. It’s hard, when his gut talks louder than his thoughts, and when Miya’s looking at him like that.

Like he wants to eat Kiyoomi alive.

“You never answered my question, Sakusa-san.”

Kiyoomi’s still looking back, trying to control his breathing. Miya’s not flushed, not blushing, but Kiyoomi can tell apart the red on his skin. He can see his capillaries, can see his blood, can hear his heart and every cell, mitosis and autophagy, setting him alight.

“How do I feed?” Miya nods, and Kiyoomi swallows. He can smell the smoke; he wonders if they’re the fire. He can feel his fangs, and his blood. He can feel every part of his skin, so far from empty, so far from full. “I take supplements.”

He laughs, wolfish, evil. His teeth are like embers, burning so hot they’re white, emitting light on all frequencies. He’s the one who smells of smoke. “Is that enough?”

Kiyoomi shakes his head, slowly. His hands are tight in fists at his sides; he’s holding back. He’s chaining himself, cementing his feet in place, burying himself in rocks so that he can’t move, he can’t try.

He stands still, so still. Miya steps closer.

“Have you ever fed on someone?”

Kiyoomi grits his teeth. His mind drowns in thoughts of his hands covered in blood, what seemed like gallons of it glistening as it slid, slow and thick, past the pavement and into the gutter, the darkness of the night, his body howling  _ yes _ , because this was what he was born to be, this is what he is — not a man, not a human, but a beast, an animal, a creature. It doesn’t leave him in shock; in this state he’s in, he’s grown immune to all of his trauma.

Instead, he wants more. He wants blood, here, now. He is so, so thirsty.

Miya keeps going when he gets no reply. “You could do like the people who feed on partners. Is your problem just with seeing blood?”

“It’s—”

Kiyoomi swallows, again.

Miya is so close, Kiyoomi sees the flecks in his eyes, the different shades of brown and his pupil retracting and dilating. Kiyoomi can’t smell smoke anymore, just him. Like the richest blood, alive, warm, and flowing.

“Miya—”

“You can call me Atsumu.”

“I don’t want to.”

He holds Kiyoomi’s arm, gently, and Kiyoomi lets out a pained exhale, a silent sob. He is so thirsty. He doesn’t want to do this.

“Sakusa. Come on.”

It hurts. Kiyoomi wants to drink him so bad it hurts, but he’s afraid, he’s terrified. There’s that clashing inside of him, vampire and person, his thirst and his trauma, and all of it hurts.

He lets his head drop, and rests it on Miya’s shoulder. It’s a mistake; he’s an inch away from his neck.

He can feel his fangs in his mouth.

“You don’t have to if it’s too much,” Miya says, but he sounds far away. There’s an impossibly thin layer of air between them, but it’s thick enough to melt away any sound, heavy with the pulsing in Kiyoomi’s veins, his hunger. “But—” Is this Miya Atsumu, the human vampire? With his evil eyes, his touch incandescent, starting a fire within him, burning him like gunpowder with just a spark? He’s so quiet. He’s almost earnest, in the way he’s pushing Kiyoomi to the brink of madness. “You want to, don’t you?”

Kiyoomi breathes. He feels—

“Don’t you want a taste?”

For all of his thirst, he doesn’t feel abnormal. He feels like he could, if he just stays strong a little further, a little longer, he could, he can—

“Sakusa.”

He digs his fangs into Miya’s neck, holding him from the other side, one hand at his waist and the other at his neck. Miya gasps and goes just a little limp in his hands, not like dying but like letting him have his way.

He struggles to keep going, and not take his mouth away. God, he loves blood, but he loathes it; he hadn’t tasted it in so long. It brings back all the memories, drives them all into his brain, drills them into his gut. He keeps his teeth sinked in, but doesn’t lick up the blood, not yet. For a second, he just holds Miya, hurting, aching, disbelieving.

Miya reaches for the back of his head. His voice comes out half-broken, but he whispers, “Keep going.” And it’s not in the way he begged, drunkenly, for a vampire, for a kiss.

He sounds like he’s doing it for Kiyoomi.

Kiyoomi lets the vampire take over. He takes out his fangs and drinks blood, finally, finally. It’s been years.

  
  


It’s weird.

Kiyoomi feels better as soon as he’s finished feeding, not just better compared to the thirst and the pain but compared to how he’s been for all this time. He’d gotten used to it, the sickness, the haze that took over his mind, the drag in his body every time he moved.

Miya, looking pale but smiling, with two clotted dots on his neck, offers him a cup of tea. Kiyoomi, feeling the aftertaste of blood in his mouth, feeling the emptiness in his gut, will take anything to get the sensation to go away.

He’s not normal, not yet. He’d gone to a therapist, once; he’d done so much research on ways to get better. He’s a methodical person, he’s a worrier, and he wanted nothing more than to be normal. Of course he’d read through everything online about exposure therapy, about getting over phobias, about resuming an everyday life, about dealing with trauma.

It’ll take a while, he’ll come around to it.

Miya hands him the tea, brimming in a fox-shaped mug, and Kiyoomi nods to thank him. They’re stuck together, now. They’re going through this together.

“Are you feelin’ ok?” Miya’s leaning back on his couch, cocky, proud. He’s still a bit pale, his pulse quieter, less blood for his heart to throb into his body. Kiyoomi doesn’t know what the etiquette for moments like this is — should he be making Miya food, since he just fed off him? Should he leave, should he thank him? Kiyoomi’s not good with manners, he’s not good with societal expectations, he’s not good with politeness.

He just nods. Miya’s smile is soft, not weak. Kiyoomi likes looking at it, blunt teeth and all.

“That’s good. You look better. I’m glad you…”

“Me too,” Kiyoomi says, quietly, drinking the tea in heaps to hope to get rid of the blood in his mouth. It felt sticky, coarser than he remembered it being. He feels like he can’t get it out, the metallic, pungent, salty taste. The remnants of it don’t make him feel as bad as the pouring blood had, though, and instead just make the emptiness simmer within him, again. In a way he can deal with, perhaps.

After a while, Miya says, quietly, “I’ll be here.” Kiyoomi looks at him, and his smile has gone even softer. It’s small, but not at all imperceptible. It melts into the corners of his face. “Whenever you need me to.”

Kiyoomi would have said something nice, picked out the words, been kind. Miya winks, and Kiyoomi decides against it. “Noted.”

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/kenhinabot)
> 
> thank you for reading! leaving kudos, bookmarks or comments will literally make me smile like the biggest fool alive. you can also come talk to me on twitter and we can be friends :)


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